Last year General Electric made a big deal about its “green” efforts, with a week’s worth of stunts like turning out the lights on its NFL pregame show. BP’s commercials might have you thinking the oil company is actually out “cleaning” the environment. And at least one retailing chain has decided you don’t need bags to carry away the junk they sell (unless you buy one of their special bags, too.) It’s better for the environment, of course.

Could it be that all this green-ness and so much more is just marketing? Accenture, the management consulting group, surveyed 130 executives of energy, utilities, chemical, and natural resources companies in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and found that over 75% of them are waiting for their governments to establish “a clear and consistent framework that supports technology innovation and lays out global emission targets and energy-efficiency standards, to help reduce the level of greenhouse gas emissions.”

In other words, for all their  “green” messages and “global citizenship” claims, corporate executives are not really sure what they’re supposed to be doing. Even so, the study found that most of these execs acknowledge “their own role in addressing climate change”: the International Iron and Steel Institute seems willing to offer a full confession.
 
But, 84% of the executives surveyed by Accenture say politicians and “policy makers” should tell them how to go about “stabilizing carbon emissions in the long term.”  That’s right. They want politicians and policy makers to tell them how to change their organizations and production processes. Apparently, the survey didn’t include many of the metalcasters who still cannot fathom the 18-year-old Clean Air Act or how it may apply to them.

There’s more: Accenture reports that “one of the clearest findings” from its research is that 87% of respondents said they consider climate change an important challenge that their company will have to face in the next five years; 50% regard it as a “key” challenge, an opinion which is particularly strong (71%) among utilities company executives. Of course; the utilities companies have concerns about challenges in the future.

“Our research indicates that we are undergoing a tipping point on the topic of climate change, as governments, customers, investors and employees are taking action – recognizing the inevitability of moving step-by-step toward a low-carbon or no-carbon economy,” says Sander van’t Noordende, group chief executive of Accenture’s Resources operating group.

I’m not doubting the research. I’m sure these execs are speaking just as truthfully as they think the general public demands. They believe in climate change because their own studies reveal that those politicians and “policy makers” have convinced the public that they must alter their living standards.

The truth is harder to determine, but it’s not so hard that we shouldn’t try to find it and incorporate it into our analysis. The climate-change canard is unraveling, and activists and “policy makers” who’ve built a power base on public anxiety don’t have a clear analysis of the shifting data that will keep the hysteria on track. Which means that corporate executives are out on a limb with their green messages, waiting to be told what to do next.

Let’s just hope they all keep waiting for someone else to make the first move.